On the other side of the coin, I think I remember getting stabbed/impaled in a dream and not finding it all that unpleasant. If I have felt any serious amount of pain in my dreams, it didn't make enough impression for me to recall it now.

Usually pain is dulled for me, but it can definitely exist. A bunch of TV shows use the whole "pinch yourself so you know you're not dreaming" urban legend, but pinching will work. In fact, sometimes I'll extend my LDs by slapping or biting myself. Feeling around with your dream body is really important to keep from waking up.

It's a fact , you can't feel pain in dream. But i felt pain in one of my dream and woke up with that pain. Isn't it impossible?

If I'm not mistaken there was a research where they proven that to the brain there is no difference whether you actually see something with physical eyes or if you think about that same thing/person you actually saw with your eyes and coming to that conclusion they think the same goes for dreams too. So to the brain whatever we dream is real therefore it is real to us. Only the perception of the realness of what we experienced varies from person to person.

As someone who has always felt pain in dreams, it's weird to run into someone who doubts whether it actually happens. I feel pain in some form or another in almost every dream I have. Sometimes it's the kind of little stuff we all know and ignore in our day-to-day lives, like leaning against a wall and accidentally putting all your weight on one tiny bit of bone under the skin. Usually it's more to do with the fact that my dreams all tend to be active and conflict-driven. There's almost always a story, there's almost always a goal, and there's almost always something or someone in the way. I've had more swordfights, shootouts, brawls and chase scenes than summer movie season at the theater, and rarely do I come out of one without at least a few scratches.

Thankfully not all of my dreams are that action-packed, and none of them are nonstop thrill rides. Still, it's sometimes hard being lucid in dreams where I know there are actually things that can hurt me. For a long time the fear of pain was a major roadblock, keeping me from experimenting with 'dangerous' things like flying. It was waking life experience that helped me get over that. Doing things despite fear of pain is a lot easier in dreams, since pain is literally the only thing there is to fear. There's a lot more to be afraid of in waking life. And after dealing with that kind of real fear long enough my dreams started feeling a lot less scary.

It seems to be different for different people, like most things on the subject of dreaming. Some can feel pain in dreams to varying degrees, others can actually pinch themselves as a reality check.

ALSOsinceborn, nice to hear that you've gotten over the fear. How are your lucid dreams now? Have you tested if you feel pain in them or if can you use dream control to make it go away?

I'm one of those dreamers that doesn't feel pain almost at all in dreams. When I feel it, it's "muffled". When an attack helicopter shot me with a machine gun as I was sliding down a mountain, it felt like someone was throwing small rocks at me. When an alien cook stabbed me in his kitchen, I only felt the motion of the blade going in my flesh several times and then the warm blood running down my skin. When half of my body got destroyed and my bones crushed, I felt nothing physically other than blood filling my lungs, airways and mouth. I tried talking, but my mouth was too full of blood. I was in shock and felt fear, though. I feared dying like I do in the dreams I'm drowning in. Still not pleasant experiences, but it could be a whole lot worse if I felt realistic pain in them.

It's been years since I worked through that, but pain being there has never really changed. Luckily I've always been pretty good at manipulating my own body (though anything else takes loads of practice), so as long as I'm not panicking there are plenty of fun little workarounds.

I know a couple of people who describe that muffled feeling, yeah. Always seemed interesting. If that started happening to me I'd be getting lucid almost every night! ALSO I definitely know the warm blood feeling. That's way more unsettling than any pain if you ask me, just such a potent sensation. Maybe it's just because I managed to get used to it, but pain in dreams has lost a lot of its...mystique? I mean it's still no fun while it's happening, especially when I'm not lucid, but I've definitely kicked the fear of going back to sleep. Knowing that it was just pain sensations and not an actual injury is kind of calming. It makes me feel like "Yes, I'm okay with doing that again. I'm safe."

Anyway thanks for sharing some of your experience. Always thought it was really cool to hear how this one thing can be so different for people.

I can feel pain in my lucid dreams just as badly as in real life, so now Im wary of doing some things in lucids.

I had a lucid in which I was trying to fly. I convinced myself I could fly (that's all one needs to do I believed.. yeah right!) and threw myself into the air thinking I'd fly but to my shock, I crashed down onto concrete. It felt like I actually broke ribs, I was crying, near screaming and in intense agony. (nothing there about dull pain).

I was in so pain from my ribs that I ended up having to wake myself up to get out of it as I couldnt focus on anything else to alter dream as the pain was too intense (when one is screaming in agony where pain as became like ones whole world, it's impossible to try change dream). It was so horrendous

I wonder if the ribs/side is an especially vulnerable area in a dream. For some reason, hits to that area leaves me in paralysing pain in many dreams, while for example breaking a leg doesn't hurt at all.

Current LD goal(s): To bring back art or a songLink to My DJ: ld4all.com

This isn't a "fact". it's a belief and/or rumor. The same as "you can't see color", or "peeing in your dream will make you pee irl".

As someone who has had vivid dreams their entire life, I definately feel pain at times. In most of my dreams i'm somewhat of a godlike entity, so I don't become damaged, which results in no pain. That can happen for people, and I think sometimes might get that confused with a solid nature of dreams.

People often seem to forget that pain is not an external thing. It's a reaction that is forged by your brain. The nature of pain is created by your brain as a reaction to something happening. If you're tied to the dream world in a vivid manner, your brain can often feel it to be real. That's pretty normal in a dream. That being said, if you in your dream believe you just got your finger cut off, you'll feel the SAME pain in the dream as if you actually did. Your brain will think it's happening, and react the same as it would irl.

In short, it really depends on your connectivity with the dream world. If it's not vivid/real to you, you may not feel pain, and i think sometimes people may just often forget due to lack of recall or importance in their dreams. But feeling pain is absolutely possible in dreams.